Can't Get the Help
by Doom Defiler of Logic
Summary: Loki's plans for world domination are perfect, assuming people do as he says.


**Two hours of writing and a weird Avengers screen cap gave me this. I don't know what to say.**

Perhaps it had been wrong of him to expect that his brainwashed minions would do exactly what he wanted, yet Loki still felt the urge to chastise them as he watched the group of former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents attempt to move a television into their new base. It was not a small portable television; it was the sort of large, flat monstrosity that the human race seemed to think made for a better image even as it drastically lowered the quality. The Asgardian hadn't understood this when he'd first arrived on the planet, and he did not understand it now. He stood back as Agent Barton directed to the two handy men to push it up against the wall, waiting for the ideal moment to speak up. Once the set was firmly on the floor, he did so.

"While I do appreciate the subtleties of meaningless labour as much as the next villain," several pairs of bright, panicked blue eyes, including those of Agent Barton, all snapped towards him. "I do have to wonder what is so special about this device that it leads my agents out of there busy schedule."

Barton's arms quickly snapped to their sides. "Commander Loki-" He began his voice calm and formal.

Loki cut him off with a wave of his hand. "Please, Agent Barton, call me Your Majesty."

Barton gave a little bow. "Your Majesty, as we had a little down time before our assignment, the men and I were just trying to make the base feel more like home."

Loki turned around and watched the unison nodding of several of the other agents, most of them clad in simple black and white suits. Now that wouldn't do at all. When he ruled this miserable planet he would make sure to pin some form of badge on each and every one of their jackets, something proclaiming their affection for him. Or fear. It mattered little which.

"I see..." He really didn't, but he thought it something Thor would have approved of, and therefore felt no urge to think over it. "Well, the mission is not too far away, I should think that you and your men would be prepping yourselves and, is that a sofa?" He asked, noticing the strange beige fabric that rose up behind the computer desk. It was hidden roughly from sight, the chords and wires of the computer making a modest camouflage, but it was still observable if you looked hard enough.

"No, your majesty." The men all said in unison, a little glowing blue streak cutting a constant line at eye level.

"You've already set up a sofa?" Loki asked, simply staring at the bit of furniture which seemed impossibly out of place in the blue and grey of their base. It just seemed too... colourful. And it was beige. He had no idea how they managed that.

"Yes, your majesty." Barton replied, looking down nervously at his feet. "And I will take full responsibility if it is your wish to punish me. These men were working under my orders, I thought it'd be nice to tidy the place up a bit and-"

"Where'd you even get a sofa from?"

Barton looked completely stunned by the question. "Pardon, your majesty?"

"We're in an old ruin that had been formerly run by your Nazi party and has been abandoned for sixty eight years prior to our arrival." Loki looked at each of the men as though the answer would simply leap at him. Instead, they merely looked muddled. "I had to holographically project myself here for a year just to install an internet connection; how did you manage to get a sofa?"

Barton gestured vaguely to the wall before answering. "We went down to the store."

"What store?"

"The Wall-Mart two kilometres down the road." He admitted sleepily. "It's sort of at the base of the mountain."

He wasn't quite sure what this 'Wall-Mart' was, but he had the impression it would merely aggravate him if he did. He gritted his teeth and sighed. "Please tell me, that you paid with physical money."

The men all looked to each of before responding with a unanimous 'no'.

Loki grunted. "Did you steal it?"

Barton's voice cracked as he spoke. "Um, we, well... uh."

"Yes, Agent Barton?"

"We may have used my credit card."

Loki stared blankly at Barton for a moment. "_Your_ credit card, Agent Barton?"

"Yes, your majesty."

Loki's hand curled into a tight fist around his staff, his nails cutting into the flesh of his hand. _Focus on the pain. Focus on the pain. Focus on the pai- _"Please tell me you brought that back here yourself?"

"Yes!" Barton yelled, the men providing a chorus of affirmatives. "Maybe." Loki glared at him. "Well, not as such, no."

Loki ground his fingers into his temples and gouged them down his skull; it was all he could do to keep himself from screaming. "You? Had it? Delivered?"

"Yep."

"Under your name?"

"Yep."

"And proceeded to not only take all defence away from the perimeter," Loki was quickly realising just how many of his minions were in this room, several of them holding alcoholic beverages. "But to hang up pictures with terrible puns on the wall!" With that, he gestured towards the picture of the cat holding onto a tree with the rather dull and low-brow caption of 'Keep hanging in there.'

At that, Doctor Selvig stepped forward and leant in, as though he and Loki were co-conspirators, and muttered. "Wait until you see Agent Barton's Garfield poster. He really hates Mondays."

Barton shrugged and exchanged a small smile with Doctor Selvig, privy to some reference that eluded Loki.

"That is not the important part of this discussion!" Loki sneered at the doctor, who then ran off to hide behind a muscled wall of soldiers. "Why don't you people get that? You can't just-! You can't-! By Agard, why are you being like this? You're S.H.I.E.L.D. agents! Surely that counts for something!"

"Well you just made us evil; you didn't really give us any orders." Barton explained. "You didn't even make a roster or pay or anything. What were we meant to do?"

Loki just about slammed his staff over his knee. His face was bright red, and if Loki had watched human television, he would have thought steam could have burst from his ears. "Something helpful! Something to help me; not parading around with a thrice cursed sofa and trying to set up a television. You could be out destroying things!"

"Ok, calm down, the game's about to start." Said one of the soldiers, who happened to be wiring the television into the wall.

"No! No! No! I'm not calming down; you are all going to be shaping up." Loki waved his hand at of the men standing before them, hoping they'd soon get the message. Since yelling at them wasn't working, he tried to calm his voice. It didn't help. "We're going to sort out some sort of management, start shifts. Make some organisation around here and-"

A triumphant cheer went up from the assembled ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, all of them throwing their fists into the air as someone behind Loki shuffled into the room. The god turned around and saw two men carrying a large box. "Who is ready for some pool?!"

A chorus of cries greeted the two men who'd just entered, prompting Loki to actually throw his staff to the ground. "No! I will not have this! Don't you see what's about to happen? Any second now, the assembled might of your finest so-called heroes will be flying down here, tracking the mountain load of a paper trail you've left behind for your entertainment," Loki could not help but put air quotes around the word. "And they will proceed to annihilate everything we set out to do, and I will be locked away in a prison cell for the rest of my eternal life, all because you lot wanted to be more comfortable! Well, no! I'm sorry! I'm done with your whining! I want you all out of this room and back on the perimeter defending this damned base! Because There is Nothing in all the Nine Realms, THAT COULD POSSIBLY MAKE THIS SITUATION **WORSE!"**

There was an enormous explosion from behind them, and just barely over the wail of tearing girders and falling concrete, Loki heard just how wrong he was. "BROTHER, NO!"

Loki groaned.


End file.
